Change the XAML auto generating text when a custom control is dropped from the toolbox onto Mainwindow

Question

When a wpf custom control is added to the toolbox and dragged onto the MainWindow, the automatically generated text in the XAML editor contains some properties=values by default.

How can I alter this text so that automatically includes some new properties of my custom control and/or remove others?

Answer 1

You can get pretty flexible design time behavior with a combination of System.ComponentModel attributes and DependencyProperty metadata. The PropertyMetadata class has a constructor that takes a default value:

[Category("MyCustomCategory")]
public string MyCustomProperty
{
    get { return GetValue(MyCustomPropertyProperty).ToString(); }
    set { SetValue(MyCustomPropertyProperty, value); }
}
public static DependencyProperty MyCustomPropertyProperty =
    DependencyProperty
    .Register(
        "MyCustomProperty",
        typeof(string),
        typeof(MyCustomUserControl),
        new PropertyMetadata("My default value")); // <--- default value